For America's 250th year, Denise Ilitch talks with two veterans who took very different paths.

Our first guest is Evan Fay, who spent 10 years in the Air Force, rising to major as a nuclear missile officer and munitions leader in Wyoming and Alaska. He then moved to Detroit to launch Café Noir in the North End and Roar Brewing Company, the city's first Black-owned brewery. He explains why veterans make strong entrepreneurs, what "Service Before Self" cost him, and how the Lions, Tigers, and Motor City inspired the name Roar.

Next is Khadijah Queen, who enlisted in the Navy to escape family hardship and pay for college, then earned a PhD and became an award-winning poet and memoirist. Her book, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", won a Michigan Notable Books award. She talks about truth-telling, banned books, and reframing adversity through imagination, and she reads from her poem "Anodyne."

Two honest, wide-ranging conversations about where service leads, how a life gets rebuilt, and what it takes to make something of your own.